Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Waste, charges and lies

Friday, Feb. 22, 2002 | 9:47 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

GOV. KENNY GUINN joined Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign in the White House to relay their fears of nuke waste being dumped on the Silver State. The governor, always a gentleman, said he wanted the opportunity to express his feelings "face-to-face."

Following the meeting, the Nevadans came away believing they had the president's attention. Guinn told Ben Grove, the Sun's reporter in D.C., that "after today I believe he's going to give some serious thought to this. I feel much better." Reid said the president was "engaged" and Guinn said he was very "intent" during the meeting. Ensign added, "I truly believe that the decision he makes, he will feel that it's made on sound science." Guinn had stressed the importance of 293 scientific questions still to be answered before action should be taken.

Eight days later the president must have had all the answers to the obvious scientific and transportation problems. He had a staff member call Nevada's chief executive to tell him he wants to use his state as a dumping ground. Unlike Guinn, who wanted to express his concerns in a face-to-face meeting, Bush didn't show the courtesy of personally giving him the bad news. I didn't think that's the way it's done in Texas -- maybe a year in D.C. and 80 percent approval ratings in the polls have changed him.

I called a Bush supporter and GOP strategist and asked why the president treated Guinn this way. "He was getting ready for an important trip to Asia and probably didn't have time," was the reply. The nuke waste-dumping announcement couldn't wait until he returned home next week? A former fellow governor who has also been a supporter and friend couldn't be given a few minutes for a personal phone call?

It's obvious that all the time our president was "engaged" and "intent" when talking to Guinn, Ensign and Reid, his mind had been made up.

Who says history doesn't repeat itself? I don't know the answer, but Dewain Steadman sure has repeated what he did back in 1992.

Recently he grabbed headlines in both daily newspapers for lodging a complaint with the FBI because of what he considers irregularities in the Las Vegas Housing Authority. He serves as a board member overseeing the authority and is displeased about how a public relations contract was awarded.

Ten years ago, also an election year, he held a press conference in front of the FBI building to announce he had filed a formal complaint against then County Commission candidate Yvonne Atkinson-Gates. Although he wasn't a candidate for the office, Atkinson-Gates had defeated him in a school board race four years earlier.

The charges against Atkinson-Gates were specious and it took her but a matter of hours to send the charges back down the road to Steadman. We heard no more about those charges.

County Commissioner Dario Herrera, a candidate for Congress, was dragged into the Housing Authority mess because he had a piece of the contested public relations contract. This week he offered to sever his ties with the contract because apparently he doesn't want or need the headache.

During coming weeks there will be much discussion about the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence. One of the jobs of the new outfit will include planting "news" items with foreign media organizations. These items could include disinformation, better known as lies, as well as some legitimate news. How will U.S. organizations that use news operations like Reuters or other foreign agencies as sources, know that it's our own lies coming home? Also how long will it take for foreign agencies to no longer believe anything coming from our country?

Over the years most of us have learned to trust news from the Pentagon. There is a vast difference between lying and not telling us everything we want to know. Most Americans know when they are being given incomplete or bad information.

Will this new office eventually get involved in influencing foreign elections? That makes me wonder how long it will take the office, headed by a general, to get involved in U.S. elections.